Beyond The Wall

Vahid Jalilvand's 2023 Iranian film opens in the flat of a blind man. Ali is about to take his own life when the caretaker arrives and says the police are searching for a woman hidden in the building; before long he realises she is inside his own apartment. The structure joins two lines. What Leila, fleeing a workers' demonstration, says does not match what Ali perceives; the narrative deliberately blurs the line between the real and the delusional and holds its explanation to the end. Navid Mohammadzadeh leads. The images are dark and the setting almost entirely one apartment; the sound design carries the tension. The narrative takes police violence and detention as direct subjects. Who it's for: those who follow Iranian psychological thrillers. Who it's not for: viewers expecting a clear sequence of events; the film leaves open until the end whether its narrator can be trusted.